In this paper we discuss the necessary technology required to enable the future of spectrum resource constrained missions. We discuss the CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology (CubeRRT) validation mission and the development of its digital backend, necessary for performing on-board RFI detection and filtering for wideband high frequency radiometry. The CubeRRT mission will validate the on-board RFI filtering technology solving technological challenges such as bandwidth, data downlink volume, and RFI types. We present a few initial results of the backend spectrometer leading to full-system integration and test.

The CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT) mission is developing a 6U CubeSat system to demonstrate radio frequency interference (RFI) detection and filtering technologies for future microwave radiometer remote sensing missions. CubeRRT will perform observations of Earth brightness temperatures from 6-40 GHz using a 1 GHz bandwidth tuned channel and will demonstrate on-board real-time RFI processing. The system is currently under development, with an expected launch date in mid-2018 followed by a one year period of on-orbit operations. CubeRRT spacecraft and radiometer instrument testing as well as the mission concept of operations are described in this paper.

The CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT) mission is developing a 6U CubeSat system to demonstrate radio frequency interference (RFI) detection and filtering technologies for future microwave radiometer remote sensing missions. CubeRRT will perform observations of Earth brightness temperatures from 6-40 GHz using a 1 GHz bandwidth tuned channel and will demonstrate on-board real-time RFIS processing. The system is currently under development, with an expected launch date in mid-2018 followed by a one year period of on-orbit operations. Development of the CubeRRT spacecraft, radiometer instrument, and concepts of operation are described in this paper.

Retrieving the height and velocity of sea waves has been of increasing interest in the recent years [1]-[7] due to many potential applications. In addition to obtaining instantaneous sea surface conditions, height and velocity information can be used for short term sea wave forecasting by combining radar measurements with methods for predicting sea surface evolution in time. Among many remote sensing options, microwave radar measurements from shipor ground-based platforms have the capability of measuring waves to at least a few kilometers while providing the added benefit of operating under a wide range of weather conditions both day and night. A wide array of X-band radar systems are already utilized for marine navigation, hence the addition of a wave height measurement option to a standard X-band marine radar is highly desirable to manage costs and simplify the system development process.

When Marr first created a theory of the Cerebral NeoCortex, his model was quickly attacked because it failed to satisfy the current understandings on how the cerebral cortex worked, and also because it failed to explain much of the function of the cortex, because it limited itself to the first 4 layers of the cerebral cortex, and ignored the functions of the other layers completely. Marr abandoned his work, when he couldn't with his probabilistic mathematics explain the connections between Neurons. With Neural Darwinism, to fall back on, the architecture of the cerebral cortex is less formal than Marr's Codon would suggest, but may still for all of that function, as he suggested. To round out the Model however we need to add a few external support elements and explain columns and mini-columns. While Marr (Marr 1970) captured the basic function of the first three layers of the Cerebral Neo-Cortex, we have reason to believe that his 4 th layer model was flawed, if only because he assumed that it's purpose was to calculate and so he assumed that the basket neurons where divisional in nature. Today, we recognize that multiple inhibitive connections at the synapse is more characteristic of a shunt function, than a division function, and so the Mathematical model seems to fall apart, suggesting other roles for layer 4, but at Marr's time, Mathematical function was assumed, if only because we did not know that there was so much individualism in the connections at the neuron level that such calculations would be meaningless. Marr himself assumed that his probabilistic mathematical treatment would explain away the individual variation, and was sorely disappointed when it failed to do so. However since then, we have Neural Darwinism, and the concepts of Non-Genetic Darwinism to explain why despite the fact that individual neuron connections are so individualized as to be impossible to map except for the individual themselves, at the gyrus and sulcys level, functional mapping seems accurate across species and with some caveats within a group of species. It is therefore quite plausible that Marr's main thesis, that the Cerebral Cortex acted as a "self-classifying content addressable memory" might still be accurate even if the details of how it worked were not as accurate as some would like. In this article I suggest that the thesis is necessary but not sufficient to explain the complete cortex function, and thus with some additions, suggest a larger function I call the Dual Mode